Smithy

That may be what happens with me, but I'm getting more nonchalant about buying something and pitching it if I don't like it and can't foist it off on someone else. Why, I even bought a small bottle of Kewpie mayonnaise last week! Haven't opened it yet.

I'm with you on the turkey! In this case, gator toes are jalapenos stuffed with cheese and sausage, then wrapped with bacon to be baked or fried or grilled. I don't think there's a firm rule or recipe for these various stuffed jalapenos. The people assembling them make up a combination of fillings and wrappings, then assign a fanciful name. The Armadillo Eggs I got at a previous stop were very different than those we got from Miiler's.

Since the "armadillo eggs" from last night and the sausage used in my darling's hash the previous night came from Miiller's Smokehouse*, it's time for one of several trips back to Llano to show some of the culinary scene. Llano bills itself, per state legislative decree, as the Deer Capital of Texas. We love it for its barbecue and interesting one-off retail stores, and its river, and its friendly people, and its fine RV park. One of the attractions is Miiller's Smokehouse. They support and promote the local hunting culture, and barbecue. Boy howdy, they do. There's pretty much everything you need to do your own barbecuing. I didn't take photos of the wood chips and fuels, but there are sauces for the meat, and dips and snacks... ...and apparent local specialty drinks. I didn't photograph their wine selections, but it's pretty impressive as well. There are fresh (more or less) fruits and vegetables, not shown here, and a lot of prepared meals, ready to bake or grill or even boil as appropriate. The "David's Creations" section was interesting, but one section - you can't read it here because of photo quality - gave me pause: Where most of the stuffed and wrapped pork loins ran along the lines of $12 or $13, those in one section were labeled $102 or so! I asked. Yes, it was a misprint on the labels. Yes, they were mortified at the mistake. Yes, they were quite grateful that I'd pointed it out! They have a cold chest full of smoked ham and smoked turkey. Beautiful stuff. No room in the Princessmobile, and we still have half a ham from home, but we can drool. Look at the beautiful bronze color of that turkey! Not all their meat is smoked. If we had room, I'd love to have gotten a brisket or pork butt from them. Again, not nearly enough room. Their deli counter is a wonder to behold. They have beautiful cuts of fresh meat, chicken, and (I think) fish although I could be misremembering that. They also have a nice selection of jalapenos and mushrooms, stuffed with various items and ready to grill or bake. I don't seem to have snapped a pic of their entire sausage selection, but they had a very nice selection of sausages, sealed and stored in a refrigerator case. They also had summer sausage hanging out in the main room. They had samples. We were hooked. The was our haul from that visit: *Funny, I only just realized there are two i's in the way they spell their name. I'll probably misspell it from time to time.

The idea of the "eggs" resting in the saucy rice was what I had in mind, but it didn't come out that way (she says, stating the obvious). Tonight's dinner will be Superburgers, fried, and my thought on the rice patties was to fry them in the fat from those burgers. The cumin and oregano in the patties, with tomatoes on the side, might be just the ticket. Thanks for that idea!

Pinto beans for breakfast this morning. I've finished one container, still have another quart to go. Last night's dinner was "Armadillo Eggs" from Miller's Smokehouse in Llano, accompanied by rice and some of the smoked corn my DIL packaged up for us. I tried the boil-in-a-bag method for reheating the corn, using the same pot as the rice, then mixing them together. It was while I was getting to ready to cook the rice that I realized none of the frozen chicken stock I'd made at home seems to have made it into the freezer. Alas, the same seems to be true of the "Better Than Bouillion" -- of which I have 2 jars each of 3 flavors at home -- and the carton of Swanson's Low-Sodium Chicken Broth that I keep as a hurry-up backup! We got away in reasonably good shape without forgetting too much, I thought, but errors and omissions have been making themselves known. I'll have more to say about that later. The upshot of not having any good cooking liquid was that the rice was bland. Neither the smoked corn nor the drippings from the armadillo eggs helped as much as I'd hoped. I'm going to try improving the leftovers by making rice patties and coating them with seasoned bread crumbs, then frying them. Suggestions welcome. The armadillo eggs were an interesting study. We liked them, but they weren't quite what we expected. They were essentially pork meatballs, wrapped around a small cheese center (pepper jack, I think) and then wrapped on the outside with bacon. I expected a jalapeno inside, and there wasn't one. You can see the cheese in the cut meatball in the photo below. There wasn't much cheese there, and the meatballs weren't as spicy as we expected. They were good, but not as good as other versions I've had. One very surprising comment from my darling last night was that he thought they tasted just like standard beef meatballs! To me they were very porky. He claimed not to know what I meant. I've known for some time that he prefers pork to beef. I thought it was for flavor as well as price. He claimed last night that it's price alone, and that he couldn't tell the difference. Sometime during this trip, perhaps more than once, we'll have to try some blind tastings to see whether that's true. I simply don't believe that he would be unable to distinguish a ribeye steak from a pork steak, both cooked on the grill, or a pork roast from a chuck roast cooked the same way. We shall see. Maybe he was trolling!

This morning I was up early THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN (grrr) and when I decided to give up trying to sleep, went outside to see if I could see any meteors. No luck in that department, but I did get a lovely dawn chorus (too bad this platform doesn't support audio) and sunrise. Then I came back inside and consoled myself with toast and hummus. We took a walk after he got up and got going. Our current camping area is near a reservoir that has been struggling to maintain its water level for some years. When we first started camping here, this campground was quite close to the water, to the point of occasional flooding, and was typically filled with fisherfolk. Now, a sea of green has sprung up where there once was water, and the "boat ramp" is a good mile past the campground. People still come down here to the water, but there aren't as many campers. Not that we mind. We like having the place mostly to ourselves. We were a bit miffed to find that the camping fee has gone up 50% since our last visit! It's now $6/night instead of $4, and half of that for holders of a Golden Age passport or its ilk. The dry land has let us see or infer a lot of wildlife. We've seen wild turkeys and deer. We suspect there are javelinas around, though we haven't seen them and we know they aren't bold enough to come raid our coolers the way they would in state parks. (I commented a couple of days ago, when I was very tired, that the jalapenos around here aren't as tame as in the state parks. That got me a funny look.) I have never seen a walking stick in the wild before today. Now I've seen two. We got back and I had a better breakfast, then started assembling photos to show you. Last night he cooked his beloved hash in our outdoor kitchen. He's finally getting the hang of producing very crispy potatoes the way he likes them. When he first started cooking hash over our campfires and complaining about the texture, I had no idea this was his goal. No wonder he was disappointed by pale, soft potatoes! There's still a little left with which he can make hash and eggs for breakfast. He stuck with his fruit and cereal this morning, good lad.

I looked at the recipes for banana catsup, then thought I might like to try some first. It's available on Amazon - that is, the stuff favored by @johnnyd, which I assume is the one @ElsieD and @blue_dolphin prefer. I also note that the prices are all over the place. I'll look around in stores to see if I can find it there first.

"Banana ketchup"? I missed that discussion. Please tell more.

"Leguminati!" Thanks for the video and the new word!

Thanks for the welcome, everyone! First, a couple of answers: He grew up in a hunting family, and hunted with his father until his mid-teens. I'm not sure he ever shot a deer himself although he ate enough venison to develop a distaste for it. (As far as I know, he put away his firearms the first time he killed a gopher in the garden he and his first wife kept.) I don't know whether he actively dislikes venison or simply dislikes the idea. He seems to like what I cook with deer meat, unless I tell him what he's eating. The same thing holds true for lamb. It's a problem, isn't it? Thanksgiving has been just the two of us since we started traveling half the year. Our question will be what to do about Christmas. The cousins who took on the mantle of family social hub from our parents' generation took a break from hosting 2 Christmases ago for personal reasons. Then the pandemic hit, and there was no question about family gatherings for Christmas 2020. Between the pandemic and the personal reasons, I suspect we won't be gathering this year either. Nobody else is in a position to host. We may have had our last big Christmas together. I'm hoping to get my sister out to join us, at least. Thank you for that vote of confidence! Yes, it works sometimes...and then there are times like last night. Remember that ham that I'd said would go mostly for mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham sometime? Yesterday we had one of those "but I thought you said..." moments where I'd been sure he was going to cook hash and he'd been sure I was going to cook the mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham. Neither of us had done any prep work by sundown; each of us was counting on the other. I lost the coin toss. There's nothing intrinsically difficult about macaroni and cheese, I know. Grate the cheese. In this case, chop the ham. Make the bechamel and add the cheese and seasonings. While that's happening, boil the pasta. Drain the pasta, mix 'em all together, and load into a baking dish. Bake until bubbly. Toppings are optional. For that matter, baking is optional. We like it baked until it develops a bit of a crust. So why is it complicated for me? First off, because I never can remember the right proportions of flour to butter to milk for that white sauce. I've written down our "favorite" version and it keeps getting refined as I work out the type of pasta we like best and the right amount of cheese. I finally think I have it the way we like it, but I still have to keep looking it up. The other complication is digging things out. Behold the over-the-counter cupboards! Pasta top left, flour top right, and -- oh, dear -- spices bottom left. That small whitish basket has to come out to get at the containers of sweet and smoked paprika. I thought there was white pepper somewhere in there, but gave up looking for it and settled for a couple of twists from a mixed-peppercorn grinder. At some point while I was rooting around for all this stuff, my darling said "I had no idea this would be so much work for you. I can start chopping potatoes for hash instead." Grr. Brave and unrealistic words, fueled no doubt by beer! Anyway, it all came out well. My latest refinement is to put the mixture into a large, flat baking dish so it all spreads out more. The Corning dishes I used to use produce thick layers. This was better. Incidentally, we do also eat vegetables. I just haven't been bothering to show them because they're typically afternoon snacks. Above, you see celery conveying to me the last of a ranch horseradish dipping sauce from a few stops ago. I'll miss that stuff. Probably need to work out how to make it.

*Bump* It's amazing how elastic the concept of "roomy" is for me. After being on the road and confined for days to only half the Princessmobile, this feels downright palatial. This is the second time we've opened out since leaving home, but we were mostly preoccupied with non-culinary business. Now, my "must-do" list has shortened from a full tablet page to a short "to do" list, already half-cleared. Time is as elastic as space, and it's stretching out again. I'll have time to start writing about the culinary adventures that punctuated our stays so far. Here's an example of a leisurely "to do" item. The Princessmobile isn't riding as smoothly as it used to, or else we're driving over rougher roads. Almost every time I've opened the door I've found items knocked over that have to be cleared before opening the glides. Among the kitchen mayhem, the utensil caddy has come off its base and needs to be repaired. "Spare room" still doesn't apply to our refrigerator or freezer, however. We left home, true to form, with all cold storage jammed. Three factors came into play here: My usual habit of buying things and storing more during the summer than I could reasonably cook, and his thinking they were beyond him, meant a lot had to come out of the household freezers so I can cook them this winter. His usual ritual of making large batches of chili and split pea stew, divvied into containers and frozen for road food or too-tired-to-cook food. These have been life-savers and are a regular part of our trip planning. These first two items would have made for a full but not overstuffed freezer. The overstuffing came when... ...his daughter and her family came for a wood-cutting weekend at home, and she came laden with gifts she hadn't been able to give us earlier in the season. Smoked corn, frozen in vacuum-sealed packets. Freshly caught fish, fileted and frozen into packets to (unwittingly) supplement my backlog of Wild Alaskan fish. Ground beef from their grass-fed beef supplier. Prime venison cuts as well as breakfast sausage. (Don't tell my darling he's eating venison!) The refrigerator is similarly jammed. We actually have emptied a few containers of food. Our road food, including breakfasts, has relied heavily on the half-ham he cooked and sliced before we left. The container of slices is finished, and this is what's left: It will probably become mac 'n' cheese 'n' ham, most of it, but I'm eyeing some of it for a strata or frittata. On long-travel -- 400 miles, give or take -- days I've made sandwiches the previous night because we're on the road by 08:30. My sandwich preferences are more complex; his more pragmatic. Ham (or turkey) and cheese for him, with Miracle Whip and mustard. Ham (or turkey), cheese, lettuce and pickles go onto my sandwiches, with mayonnaise (NOT MW) and mustard. Mine are tastier, I say. His are better for driving without dripping. I don't like those long days. Sometimes I share the driving duties, but for the most part I sit in the passenger seat, read, watch the scenery go by and wish I could stretch. We've talked about getting a motor home when it comes time to replace the Princessmobile. The advantage would be that the non-driver could move around more. Last night was not a long-distance day, but it was a long one anyway, and we were plenty tired...much too tired for any cooking. It was time for chili and beer. Lots of beer. Then bed. Still...here we are, far southwest of that large "H", while our home base is digging out from its first snowstorm of the season. *I* think this map shows Duluth as the center of the country. *He* thinks it proves we were wise to leave when we did.

Question for those of you with more experience: how do you determine which setting to use for a particular mixture? For instance: in the creamy persimmon sorbet that @blue_dolphin did, there's no dairy. Is that what makes the sorbet setting right for that mixture?

I can see why! That set is beautiful. How large are they?

I certainly have nothing to add to those flavor combinations, but I think they sound terrific. I'll wait with interest to see what mgaretz suggests. So far I'm in the "why did I buy it if I wasn't goingo to play with it?" camp. A pint of persimmon mixture, treated with extra half-and-half and refrozen, is still sitting in our freezer. All too often, by the time we're done with dinner we aren't interested in dessert...and during the afternoons, we don't indulge. Go figure! That said, we (my husband and I) both want me to be playing with the Ninja CREAMi more, so inspirations and teasing are welcome!

You can also adjust your order to get add-ons. That's where the sablefish comes in. They also offer spotted prawns.

Maybe @jackal10 will weigh in on his experiences. Granted, his AGA was purchased secondhand and was made in the 1940's, but he did some fine things in it / on it during his foodblog.

I don't believe I ever followed up on subsequent batches. I haven't had any problem with mealy texture since that first time, and I've followed more or less the same procedure as you describe for thawing. I have still had trouble cooking salmon so that it didn't dry out: even steam-convection baking in the CSO managed to overdo it for us, no doubt because the filets are so thin. Oddly enough, I've had much better success with their cod, slightly better success with their halibut, and excellent success with the sablefish. What's odd about it is that I'll take salmon every time over a white fish for flavor...but hey, I'm finding ways to cook those white fish so that we both like it!

I sprang for "Buttermilk & Bourbon", since I had to leave my print copy behind for the winter, and for Julia Reed's "Ham Biscuits..." because it sounds like a howlingly fun read. Thanks, Toliver!

That recipe looks like something I should try. I don't grow garlic myself, but I am guilty of overbuying at farmers' markets and then needing to do something with it.

@liuzhou, is there any special type of mango that works best with this? I'm especially wondering about green vs. ripe mangoes, but I know there are many different mango varieties.

Half and half.

Earlier I reported that... I spun it tonight. I used the Sherbet setting, since it was more nearly sherbet than ice cream. It came out grainy, so I re-spun it. Maybe it smoothed slightly from the second spin. Flavor pretty good, but the concoction has a grainy - not icy - texture. Adding a small amount of half-and-half helped slightly but didn't get rid of the sensation. I suspect, but am not sure, that the "grainy" texture is the tannic gritty mouth feel that comes of eating not-quite-ripe Hachiya persimmons*. If that's the case, there probaby isn't much to be done about it. Since we aren't sure what's causing that sensation, we think it's worth tweaking. I've added about 1/4 cup of half-and-half and mixed it enough to melt and level. It's going back into the freezer. *That sensation is distinctive once you've experienced it, but hard to describe. Think of the gritty sensation you get on your tongue and teeth from eating a lot of spinach (yes, even if it's well washed) and you'll be on the right track.

I just unearthed a sealed package of chicken breasts from sometime earlier this year when summer was a-cumin in. May or June. There's no date. (What was I thinking?) The label says it was cooked at 145F and I'm sure it cooked at that temperature for at least 2.5 hours, maybe 3 to 4 hours. Why I didn't label it more carefully is a mystery. Why I forgot it and allowed it to be buried in a crisper drawer is an even greater mystery. My question is, can I count on it still to be pasteurized after all this time? Note that "all this time" consistutes a range of 4 - 5 months. The bag has no air gaps, no poofiness. It has been refrigerated.

I had to look up omani, and wade past the references to the sultanate and its people. Now that I have done so, I see that it's a treatment that can be given to lemons or limes (or, I presume, other citrus). What type of omani did you use? I bought black dried limes some time ago but haven't tried them.

Another idea: as I recall these persimmons have so much pectin that the pulp sets up in a heartbeat after you cook it. Could you cook it down and then pour it into molds for a firmer dessert? Maybe use some gelatin to firm it up, if freezing destroys the pectin? (I don't remember whether pectin is affected by freezing.) I made persimmon panna cotta last year. It tasted good but was rather bland. My husband and I agreed that it needed something to brighten its flavor and appearance. He, the traditionalist, opted for whipped cream. I thought a drizzle of prickly pear syrup was just the right touch.